Democratic Surrender Monkeys

Unconditional surrender! That is the only accurate phrase to describe Friday's passage by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives of the so-called FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This bill, the bastard child of House majority leader Steny Hoyer (Md) and Senate intelligence committee chair Jay Rockefeller (WVa) gives the Bush administration everything it wanted on the domestic spying front, and more! As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, the bill gives to the administration what it could not have even hoped to obtain from a Republican-led House. It greatly expands the powers of the government to spy on Americans, and in its most odious sections grants sweeping immunity to telecom companies and their Bush administration allies for breaking the existing FISA law. It retroactively excuses, and attempts to put a stamp of approval on half a decades worth of administration law breaking. It does this by placing a so-called "requirement" on the administration that makes a mockery of the rule of law and the Constitutional separation of powers. Essentially, the bill requires that existing law suits be dismissed if the telecom companies simply show that they were directed by the President or his agents to carry out the spying, and/or that the administration "certified" that it was legal! Talk about handing the fox the keys to the chicken coop. This legislation grants to serial lawbreakers the power to decide legality, and reinforces the theory perpetuated by this administration that if the President says it is legal, it is! A more dangerous, and un-Constitutional precedent can hardly be envisioned.

Moreover, the bill provides for broad secrecy surrounding the dismissal of lawsuits, the government simply having to invoke the magical phrase, "national security," to shield the details of the law breaking from the eyes of the public. The section of the bill granting this sweeping immunity is entitled, "Protection of Persons Assisting the Government." Orwell himself would have struggled to come up with that one, but it was apparently duck-soup for the Democratic enablers of Bush administration lawbreaking.

Let's try and get our heads around the magnitude of this capitulation. It's not that easy, so stay with me. The Democratic-controlled House just handed this stunning victory to perhaps the weakest sitting President in history; a President that can barely maintain 25% approval ratings; a President whose Party is also now widely, and justifiably reviled and rightly fearful that they will be thrown from office in large numbers come November; a President and Party that have treated the Democrats with utter disdain and contempt for almost 8 years, who have called them "traitors" and most recently referred to their presumptive presidential nominee as an "appeaser" like those who appeased the Nazis. It is this President and Party that the Democratic leadership, over the opposition of more than half of their caucus, including many committee chairmen, handed such a victory! Politics is wondrous strange indeed.

What could be the mental calculus at work in the minds of such "leaders?" Indeed it is hard to fathom how the majority Party in the House could rend itself asunder so and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. One is forced to conclude that there are basically two reasons for such a wholesale capitulation. First, the current Democratic leadership is largely beholden to the same Corporate interests as the Republican Party. Put simply, the big telecoms fill many Democratic coffers with cold hard cash. And if anything is clear from the status quo in Washington it is that money talks. So, it's simply too easy for them to grant immunity and not upset the apple cart, or perhaps the gravy train is a more accurate phrase in this case. Consider the signal this sends to many Americans, that Corporate money is much more important to the Democratic Party leadership than the Constitutional freedoms of their own constituents. This is a craven and cowardly calculation if ever there was one. Second, it seems that the senior Democratic leadership are still so fearful; so cowardly and fearful. They somehow believe that surrendering the rule of law will make them look "tough on terrorism." In fact, what is plain for all to see is that it simply makes them look weak, craven and without principles or honor. That is, it makes them look just like Republicans!

The reality here is far different from the "tough on terrorism" pretext being offered by the capitulators. Passage of this legislation will not do anything to increase security against terrorism. The existing FISA law was and still is entirely adequate to enable the government to obtain the necessary intelligence to protect the Nation. Moreover, this administration's actions in the so called "war on terrorism" have not made us safer. Far from it, their reckless foreign policy has only bred more fanaticism abroad, and they have neglected common sense strategies to strengthen our domestic security posture. Even in the face of mountains of current polling data suggesting that American's attitudes are sharply opposed to the direction that this administration and its Republican Party rubber stamp have steered the country, the fossilized and inept Democratic leadership still believe that in order to win elections they must look more and more like Republicans. Since it is now absolutely clear that they will never learn this lesson, perhaps because they ultimately share most of the same priorities as the Republicans, the final remedy must be to vote the whole pathetic lot of them out of office. If you are interested in helping in this regard, check out the campaign being organized by Act Blue.